Thursday, January 29, 2015

A while back we visited a shop called “Empty the Nest.” It’s
a small store front stuffed with all manner of junk and treasure. It
specializes in helping people “empty their nests” (or their parents' nests) of
things they simply don’t know what to do with. You can find a vintage apron. A
dresser Grandma owned. Fishing tackle. A box of buttons. A zip lock bag full of
drill bits. I usually try to stay away from such places, but that’s where I found a “gasp.” Carelessly cast across a dirty shelf
and hiding beneath a broken violin, a gleam of persimmon caught my eye. I
lifted the box and there lay – a hand-woven, hand-dyed wool rug. It is small,
only about two by two and a half feet, old, but exquisite. The colors are still
vivid. No wear or flaws. Some artisan made a perfect rug a long time ago. I
exhaled and looked over my shoulder, suddenly filled with an anxious need to
own it. Would someone grab it from my hand shouting, “MINE!”? I wondered if I could
mount a defense for spending money on it? It was my birthday – it was. Could it
be a gift to self from self? Whoever priced it must have sensed that it had
some value. I had to pay $25.00 for it. So there it was: an Indian-type rug, perfect
for the “baked clay” wall color in the bedroom of our new home. I only wish I
knew more about its origin.

That rug was what Maira Kalman would call a “favorite thing”
something that makes you gasp with delight. Those are the things, she writes,
that are worth keeping. Because of her illustrated book –My Favorite Things and her work (she calls her work “curating a
life”) for a museum, I have a fuzzy little gauge, a sweet reminder that it’s
okay to keep a few things you really like even as you simplify life. You might
even admit you love them. This past year has been one of letting things go
before we made our big move last May. Things were given away. Sold on Craig’s
list. Taken to Salvation Army. Dumped or recycled. Some things were a little hard
to give up – like the fragile “Flow Blue” antique china I inherited from Denis’
great-grandparents. A big old buffet with wood inlay from the 1940s. Those two
particular things were easier to give up because a family member was delighted
to have them. It was a relief to fling other things out of the house. Old
paintings and faded photographs that made me grimace, not gasp – Gone! A large
patchwork quilt kept for years out of guilt – Gone! Years ago it was a gift from
Denis’ step-grandmother. Wouldn’t that normally be a welcome gift? You would
think. But this was one ugly quilt with large patches of polyester prints from
old dresses backed by a muddy gold fabric, she warned me I had better appreciate that quilt because it
had taken her a long time to make it! So I kept it year after year, even after
she died. It didn’t even reinvent itself to become an interesting retro piece
of Americana. It remained repellent. I gave it away to someone who dumbfounded
me by liking it.

As I wrote in a recent blog post, “I understand that not
EVERYthing needs to make me gasp. I don’t want to have a hard time breathing
when I climb into bed at night. I mean. There needs to be calm scenes.
Functionality. Quiet colors. Soft beds. Crisp sheets. None of that has to make
me gasp. We understand. But it is a useful measure I’m going to be checking in
with now and then.”

As it turns out, because of a broken ankle, I’ve had more
occasion to enjoy it as it hangs on the wall of our bedroom. Certain patterns
and colors make me happy. In a Japanese philosophycalled Naikan, people are reminded “to be
grateful for everything. If you are sitting in a chair, you need to realize
that someone made that chair, and someone sold it, and someone delivered it –
and you are the beneficiary of all that. Just because they didn’t do it
especially for you doesn’t mean you aren’t blessed to be using it and enjoying
it. …[thus] life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to
notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the few things that
go wrong.”- The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

What is it called when the words you
say have a meaning completely opposite from their actualdefinition?
Here's a for instance that is pretty innocuous. Or is it? I'm not sure.

In conversation if you tell someone something and they
respond in a hearty voice with, “Good!” or "Great!" You kinda get
they don't mean good or great at all. What they probably mean is, I don't have
time to listen to your pathetic stories. Or, you are boring me so bad, I’d like
to slap you, but I love Jesus. Or, leftovers again? Or….?

The satirist at The Cresset, (a literary and art journal
published by Valparaiso University) – Tom Willadsen, wrote a little rant about
what "Bless your heart," really means, and it got me thinking about
my own use of handy verbal punctuation and a little habit I have of taking
others to task for their use of it.

I've had some conversations about that very phrase and my
friends agreed that, for example, if someone says, "Bless her heart, she's
trying to lose weight" what that really means is: “I’m sure glad I’m a
size 4!”Or, “too bad she can’t stay on
that diet, because she’s a big momma.” Or, “I lay money on it. She’s a
closet eater.” I had already decided not to use that comment again. But there
are others I need to excise. Just saying I’m not exactly snow-white here.

Willadsen wrote:

“I now use the phrase as a verbal crossed fingers behind my
back. I say “Bless your heart,: but I
mean:

·Each day in my prayers I lament that you had
children, or

·As far as I can tell, your sole purpose on the
planet is to irritate everyone you encounter, or

·Given a choice between having white-hot tungsten
spikes thrust through my lungs, and accepting your invitation, I’m going with
the spikes, or

·Remember that device I told you about that
measures my hostility? Your request has rendered it obsolete, or

·I hate you.”

My thinking this is funny might reveal something twisted in
me. I can yammer on about how we ought to be living and growing in the fruit of
the spirit – in fact, only the other day I pressed hard on someone who was
verbally unkind to another. This could be dangerous, like I’m the
self-righteous, brickhead Publican dumping on the Sinner over in the
corner.

On the other hand, if satire is, as the dictionary defines
it, “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize
people's stupidity or vices;” and if satire is what Willadsen is doing, then,
he succeeded and maybe we can laugh because we see ourselves and humor helps it
go down a little more easily.

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For many years we lived in Toad Hall, an old American Gothic Foursquare house named for the mansion in Wind in the Willows although ours wasn’t really a mansion, the kids just thought it was. Now we live in a different home – one more suited to aging with dignity – yes, well, we can hope – The House Between. “Between” because we are living that stage of life between now and what is to come. Sound a little macabre? It’s not. We needed move to a space with main floor accessibility for older people who may not always be able to climb stairs to sleep and eliminate. We love this home in a quiet neighborhood with offices overooking the wooded ravine behind where we feed birds and watch coyotes play leap frog. We love knowing, too, that this is not our final place – there is more healing and goodness in the next life. I’ve kept the name of my blog toadsdrinkcoffee because I don’t know how to migrate to a new one. The name is now even more obscure, but it had to do with living in Toad Hall and my addiction to coffee. However, I did migrate my old publication – Notes From Toad Hall– to the new one Letters from the House Between.